Advanced Navigation has signed a $26 million supply agreement with Norwegian defence manufacturer Kongsberg for navigation systems destined for Poland’s drone defences.
The Sydney deep tech scaleup will supply hundreds of its Boreas inertial navigation systems for integration into Kongsberg’s Protector counter-drone platforms.
The platforms are being manufactured in Norway for the Polish Armaments Agency under a broader NOK16 billion (around $2.41bn) agreement.
Advanced Navigation’s contract is supported by the Australian Department of Defence’s Global Supply Chain Program, which helps Australian businesses crack international defence markets.
Boreas uses fibre-optic gyroscopes to provide positioning, orientation and heading information when GPS signals are jammed, manipulated or unavailable, and helps the weapons platforms maintain sensor alignment and track and engage aerial threats.
The deal follows an earlier multimillion-dollar agreement to supply Advanced Navigation’s Boreas D90 systems for Kongsberg’s Protector RS4 platform.
Advanced Navigation EMEA MD David Leniewski, said electronic warfare is changing what defence systems needed to operate reliably.
“It depends on knowing exactly where the platform is, how it is moving and maintaining that accuracy even when GPS is denied,” he said.
The companies are targeting two problems exposed by drone warfare: the cost of using expensive interceptors against cheap attack drones, and disruption to weapons systems that rely on satellite navigation.
Kongsberg’s platforms are designed to reduce the cost of each engagement, while Boreas supplies navigation data when satellite signals cannot be trusted.
Advanced Navigation said its in-house manufacturing and testing capabilities would support high-volume production as European governments accelerate defence procurement.
The Sydney-headquartered company manufactures in Australia and exports globally, with technology spanning robotics, photonic and quantum sensing, underwater acoustics and satellite navigation equipment.
